Photographers attacked: Two weeks in southern Africa

From Cape Town to Lilongwe, four photographers on routine
news assignments in major southern Africa cities were assaulted by security
officials in the past two weeks. The details differ, but the heavy-handed
actions in each case reflect a belief among those responsible for security that
they are above the law and not publicly accountable. These recent attacks in
southern Africa also highlight a wider phenomenon: Every day, somewhere in the
world, news photographers are subjected to physical abuse by security and
public officials who wish to suppress or control the powerful message delivered
by images.

"Photographs provide incontrovertible proof. If there is no
photographic evidence it's easy to explain things away," says Greg Marinovich,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer
and co-author of The Bang-Bang Club, which detailed
the work of photographers documenting violence in South Africa during the
transition from apartheid. "There's an audible noise when pictures are taken
and a breaking of tension when the shutter is released. The subject understands
when the picture is taken and I think officials have been told, 'Don't get
yourself caught on camera.'"

In risky situations such as street protests or conflict
zones, photographers and camera operators suffer disproportionate rates of
fatality as documented by CPJ. Photographers
and camera operators constitute more than 35 percent of journalist fatalities
since the beginning of 2011, a period marked by large-scale civil unrest in the
Arab world and conflict in the Middle East and South Asia.

But underlying the fatalities are instances of
harassment, obstruction, and assault that photographers face every day in
Africa and elsewhere. The recent southern Africa attacks all occurred in countries
at peace, with functioning democratic institutions. In the most violent episode,
on May 29, a private security guard fired
rubber bullets at close range at The Star
photographer Motshwari Mofokeng, who was photographing the eviction of people living
in an empty Johannesburg factory. Such guards are routinely employed by
provincial and local governments in South Africa to evict people occupying
buildings or land illegally

Mofokeng, working with a reporter, was outside in a public
place, covering a public issue. All seemed fine at first, until Mofokeng
photographed security personnel chasing people. A guard turned his attention to
Mofokeng, striking him and threatening to break his camera, the photographer told
CPJ. In the subsequent melee, Mofokeng
said, someone threw a stone at the guards and then a guard in a black uniform began
firing. "The first shot was right at me. There were five or six shots after
that: pah, pah, pah," said Mofokeng, who was hit in the
chest. He continued working, but later sought treatment at a local hospital and
filed a complaint with police.

In an editorial, The Star editor Makhudu Sefara said the
shooting was an attack on all citizens. "The truth is that media freedom is not a privilege for media
practitioners, he wrote. "All of us, as freedom-cherishing South Africans, must
realise that every time a journalist is klapped [hit], or shot, or killed, it
is not merely about their publication or family, it is about all of us."

In Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, Nation photographer Thoko Chikondi
was punched and manhandled by a security guard while taking images of a
consumer rights activist delivering a petition to parliament on May 30. "Suddenly
the chief security officer arrived and told the activist to get out of parliament,"
Chikondi told CPJ.

"If the security guard had used force on the activist it
would have made a good photo and I would have taken it, but that didn't happen
and so I didn't take a picture of the security guard, only the activist," she
added.

"But within the blink of an eye," said Chikondi, the guard
grabbed at her camera and shouted that she had been photographing him without
permission. "I held on to my camera trying to protect it and I was hit in the
face. The guard hit me on my head with his hands." Chikondi, who was treated at
a local hospital for bruising, filed a complaint with police. Police later lodged
an assault count against the security officer, who denied the charge in court this
week. "I was lucky there was another photojournalist who took pictures of what
was happening to me," Chikondi said. "If not for those pictures, it would have
been otherwise."

In two separate episodes in Cape Town, photographers from
the Cape Argus--a sister newspaper to The
Star owned by the Independent Group--were roughed up and obstructed as they tried
to cover the Department of Home Affairs' treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates
there are half a million refugees and asylum-seekers in South Africa, mostly
from Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

On May 22, photographer David Ritchie and reporter Yolisa
Tswanya were interviewing family and friends of refugees who had been arrested
for not carrying their identity documents and who had gathered outside the
Caledon Square police station in central Cape Town. "As Dave lifted his camera,
an official wearing a brown uniform spotted him," Tswanya said. At first the
journalists thought the individual was a prison official, but they later came
to believe he was with Home Affairs. "He came over and told Dave to delete the
photo. Dave refused, the official tried to take his camera, then grabbed Dave
by the arm and dragged him into the police station courtyard. They wouldn't
allow me to go with him."

The official deleted the pictures and returned the camera to
Ritchie--who went back to the gathering and took more photos. The newspaper is considering
both a civil and criminal complaint against the official.

The director-general of the national Department of Home
Affairs told the Cape Argus that the
agency had a policy
of transparency and did not support the official's behavior. The
department's manager for the Western Cape province said an investigator would
look into the reported assault.

Five days later, Cape
Argus freelance photographer Thomas Holder was taking pictures of hundreds
of asylum-seekers waiting to renew their papers at the Refugee Reception Centre
on Cape Town's Foreshore.

When the gates to the center opened, Holder said, the crowd
surged and staff turned a fire hose on the refugees. "I moved towards the gate with the crowd, never entering the
premises, and shot more pictures closer to the gate of police and Mafoko
Security staff pushing people out of the doorway of the centre and battling to
close the gate," Holder toldCape Argus
reporter Kieran Legg.

Holder said a security guard directed
him to stop taking pictures. When Holder refused, another guard grabbed him,
pulled him into the reception center, and punched him in the chest. According to the Cape Argus report, the manager of Mafoko Security's Cape Town branch, Newton
Mathosa, called Holder's report "implausible" because
roughing up someone would have provoked the crowd.

Security personnel and public officials have long known--and
often feared--the power of images. And today digital technology and social media
have led to the exponential spread of documentary photography.

"Even in the time of Bang Bang (some two decades ago) people
were wary of being documented because it could be used as part of cases, or
evidence. And the more sophisticated were aware of how images could be used for
propaganda," Marinovich said. Referring to the spreading influence of
documentary photography, he said: "Perhaps I see a difference now in the effect
of photographs. There's a trickle-up effect given the power of the picture to
show what's happened."

Sue Valentine, CPJ's Africa program coordinator, has worked as a journalist in print and radio in South Africa since the late 1980s, including at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg and as the executive producer of a national daily current affairs radio show on the SABC, South Africa's public broadcaster.